Rogue Officer Read Online Free PDF

for a bit.’
    ‘Yeah?’ replied Gwilliams in an uninterested voice. ‘So, what happened?’
    Wynter shambled forward with the rest of the column.
    He shrugged. I got drunk.’
    ‘Surprise me,’ drawled Gwilliams.
    Private Wynter had been with Jack throughout the Crimean War, from start to finish. Jack had been a sergeant in those days and Wynter had been a thorn in his side. Despite the fact that the pair of them were the only ones left serving out of the original peleton that had been formed by Major Lovelace as his intelligence gatherers, Jack and Wynter were as far apart as men could be. Jack despised Harry Wynter and Harry Wynter despised everyone but himself. Adversity normally forges friendships but not in this case. When Jack had been promoted to lieutenant, Wynter had somehow managed to get his sergeant stripes.
    It seemed Wynter had not held on to his new rank for very long. Harry Wynter was from a large poor rural family, the product of having to fight for every scrap of food that passed his lips when he was a child, and had consequently developed into a conniving, sly adult who trusted no one, hated the world, and felt that property belonged to he who could wrest it from another, either by force or cunning. He was always on the lookout for those weaker than himself, so that he could crush them. This especially applied to native inhabitants of countries other than his own.
    While these two were going on ahead, King rode forward to speak with his officer.
    ‘You have a history, sir, with that individual?’
    ‘Yes – I thank you for intervening.’
    ‘My job. Don’t forget, sir, you’re an officer now, not a sergeant. You don’t have to deal with the likes of him. That’s for NCOs. I’ll sort him out.’
    ‘I spent almost three years trying to – and failed.’
    King said, ‘Well, perhaps you were born to be an officer and I was born to NCO rank, and so . . .’
    ‘So, you’ll make a better job of it?’
    ‘It’s a thought.’
    ‘I hope you may, sergeant. For my part I was weary of the man in the Crimea and I can’t see my attitude towards him changing. He’s trouble from helmet to boots. He whines constantly, he gets drunk at the slightest sniff of gut rot and he continually starts fist fights he never ever looks like winning. Wynter seems to have the capacity to absorb blows and misfortunes, both physical and mental, which would cripple any other man. Yet there he stands, my nemesis, haunting my every step in life.’
    Wynter was not Lieutenant Fancy Jack’s only personnel problem. There were others.
    For instance, he and Sergeant King himself did not always see eye to eye about things. King was far more interested in map-making than he was in spying or sabotage. He actually saw making maps as his prime duty. That was what he had been trained for and that was what excited him as a man. Jack, on the other hand, did not give an owl’s hoot for map-making and he
knew
that the purpose of his crew was intelligence gathering and sabotage. Thus the two men were often at loggerheads with each other, Jack usually winning but not always. King often took advantage of the times when Jack was ill or away to further his feverish desire to create maps.
    King had been foisted on Jack just before the lieutenant left the shores of Britain for India. This time it had been Colonel Hawke who had insisted that Jack take on a new man. Although he and King had fought the Indian Mutiny campaign together, they too held views to which each could not reconcile himself. King was a blacksmith’s son, educated at a boarding school, and keen to raise himself above his origins. He had taken to map-making as eagles take to the air. He soared.
    Sergeant King was unmarried but had been in India for a previous tour of duty. While there he had fallen in love with a village girl and had got her pregnant. His unit had taken him away from the village and when he returned she was gone, no one would tell him where. Later the